Greedy Goblin

Monday, June 1, 2015

This blog used to be about objectivism and ISK making, now it's about "evil" Goons

The title is a (not word by word) comment from Zaxin, placed under a post where it was totally offtopic. However it was very interesting and true.

I did write about research, ideas and in-game moneymaking tips. I opened a few eyes, but achieved no paradigm change. Just like Ayn Rand who has a much wider readership, practically every educated person knows her work (at least from reviews), yet not a single objectivist government was elected in the World. The ironic truth is there is absolutely no objective proof for objectivism which believes in nothing but the objectively existing. I had a much smaller goal, an "objectivist government" in a video game, where people are much less risk averse and open to try out wild things.

Why? Because one (usually competitive level) leader commanding a bunch of obedient socials is more powerful than a rational man standing alone. Hell, they have enough surplus to carry some M&S on the way. The idea of rational thinking remained an idea, while the political structure of the World isn't better than it was when Rand first published anything.

To achieve anything, I have to show two things:

The social ideas of friendship and "one for all, all for one" are lies fed by psychopathic leaders who don't believe it, just use it to exploit social sheep

One man standing alone can match the power of thousands of such sheep

Can anyone point at a better target than Goonswarm? I mean they are comic-book level examples of the above. The leadership is openly psychopathic, openly very rich, openly from the work of their minions and openly demand complete obedience from them, offering nothing but "we are better than the pubbies" ego-boost in return.

On the other hand, here I am, all alone with no friends. I only cooperate with others by means of trading and donations of money. And Goons fell in stupid amount in the first year of my crusade.

When the last Goon will be out of Sov space, the players of this game will have a visible reason to consider my ideas. Sure, socials will be socials, but if a few leader-capable competitive person will say "I rather not bother collecting sheep if I can do it all by myself", I'll be very happy. Especially because a trade-based, non-social cooperation with such individuals could move mountains, at least in the simulation we spend our free time in.

9 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I was with you until you cast mittens as a psychopath. The man mad a mistake, a serious error in judgement, an unbelievably bad misstep. His enemies then cast all sorts of aspersions on him, all the way up to the ridiculous "cyberbulling" statements.

You may fundamentally disagree with him, that is your right. But to call him a psychopath? On what basis do you make this diagnosis? What qualifications do you have in order to make this assessment?

As for rich? He is I suppose in game rich. He's out of game wealthy from non-game related means (successful lawyer, followed by successful businessman [gaming media]). Your continued claims that he makes money out of the game are baseless.

You claim that goons died at a stupid amount in your first year - but the truth is goons have always died. They've always been targets, and always been terrible at the game. One thing you repeatedly fail to do while beating your chest about your victories is show how your work has lead to an objective reduction in goon activity, or has in any way directly hurt the way goons play the game. If you cannot show that, no amount of damage done is worth anything. You are little more than a breeze pushing against a mountain, hoping push it over.

Now, if you can show that you have done real tangible damage to the way goons play the game (at the level that they have done to countless entities and arguably every player in the game), then colour me impressed, but you have not once shown this. Ever.

What you have done is astonishing and impressive in it's own right. Amassing personal wealth to even consider funding an SRP to take on the biggest empire in the game is great... but the incessant chest beating, victory speeches and continual goal post moving is tiresome and intellectually dishonest.

The issue you have with the idea that a few individuals can move mountains, is that many individuals like that can reshape the entire world. That's how goons work. A core cabal of some few hundred individuals with wealth at least in the same order of magnitude as yours. Yes there are hangers on. No hopers. Morons and Slackers. And yes these are the majority. But you fail to recognise that your wealth is nothing compared to what any of the major sov entities can afford to lose. And when you look at what it takes to topple an empire in eve, you'll realise that a few trillion here and there is childs play.

Objectivism largely failed to produce any real-life consequences because Rand didn't really say anything new in philosophy. She just rehashed old stuff under the guise of her interpretation of "objectivity" (which in her case basically amounts to refusing to concern oneself with anyone else's point of view)More on this here - http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2013/07/01/ep78-ayn-rand/

That being said, i've been following your anti-Goon crusade with great interest. So far, this has been an excellent reenactment of what humanity went through back in XVII-XVIII centuries - as modernity finally got its hands on the tech that allowed it to beat back the then-previously existing social order.

Now i'm just waiting for someone to formulate something similar to the ideas of Renaissance within Eve-verse. Because Newton and Adam Smith are not not worth all that much without Da Vinci :D

I don't expect you to become Eve's Da Vinci, though. It is impossible to formulate something this grand while staying within the confines of just your own brain - no matter how superior you believe this brain to be compared to brains of "sheep".

The problem with your endgame is this:MOA and the like will never be the ones credited with toppling Goonswarm. The credit, in the eyes of Eve players, will go to the group that successfully invades Deklein and takes all the Sov. That group will (almost certainly) not be espousing objectivism, it will be run by a leadership team and backed up by socials, just as Goons are today. Even if MOA gets some credit, they are a social group as described above, with Gen and Massa as the leaders and the remainder as a horde following their whims.If you wish to prove objectivism functions well within Eve, you need to actually start an organisation based upon these ideals and lead that organisation in a way congruent with those ideals. At that point, you can point to your way of playing and say "Look, we beat Goons because we were organised in a much better way than they were, and we played in a much better way."

There are other problems in your post here: I've met a number of Imperium players, none felt that complete obedience was something required at all. Most of them said they were very happy in their alliances because to a large degree they could do what they wanted and turn up to what they wanted. In many ways the content itself is what they get in return, though also the friendship group and opportunities to compete more successfully in some fields should they desire (rating, manufacturing, etc).

As an aside: With these goals, do you also feel that posting a few random killmails a day has any meaning? Given a number of the ones you post tend to be valid fits that got caught outside their ideal area, and many others are rating fits that likely paid for themselves many times over, it seems to be a personal ego stroking exercise more than anything.

Actually, fozzie sov would be your ideal proving ground.MOA / Marmite have never been more than annoyances to the Imperium, your belief nothwithstanding.As others have pointed out (repeatedly) the income generated by sov holding, even at an individual level, outstrips the occasional loss of a ratting ship.But to take the sov, large fleets are needed and only coordinated groups working with large numbers could ever threaten that.But now a few people with an entosis link could theoretically disrupt sov.So, in your view, a single rich person funding mercenaries to continually attempt to take sov should win from a social group trying to use sov for mutual benefit.Since small ships should suffice, it could even be cheaper than funding ganking groups.

in the time Rand published. the western power structure embraced http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays ideas. we still have to deal with that toxic influence. so much so that phrases like your "a rational man standing alone." become questionable to invalid.

Still this isn't about the west or any RL it's about EVE. And "leaders" can't be compared. An "EVE Corp CEO" or "Alliance leader" can't be compared to any western puppet called "President" or "Chancellor".

Don't fret. The newly rich (everything since Oil and Industrial age onwards) loved Atlas Shrugged Story. They already bought the world multiple times over and they have decided to let it go as we see it now.

As for EVE. change can come from natural disasters (CCP) .. so we'll have to wait (fozzysov).

What I find humorous about this, is your desire to fight "social groups". This is a game, a game based on team play and social networking. To say you want to destroy the basic principals of a social group is, at its core, a desire to destroy the game itself.

If you do not agree with that, then you do not even have the smallest understanding of null, or EVE in general.

Personally, it is the social aspects of the CFC that is most appealing. I do a fair amount of ratting, dabble in the market and industry, and enjoy multiple levels of PvP. Even with all of thoses options, the most enjoyable part of logging into the game is being in comms. The CFC not only fosters multiple social groups, it also encourages a bit of corp interplay, which keeps moral up and keeps us all happy.

So while you complain about the CFC, we sit back enjoy what we like and have a good laugh at all the Grrr Goons. Please keep doing what you are doing, and we will gladly read it and have a good chuckle.

There absolutely is objective proof for Objectivism in all branches of the philosophy. If your point is simply the full laissez-faire capitalism has never been implemented, proof does not require its full implementation. Moreover, underneath all that is a theory-practice dichotomy that is also false.

Capitalism is the ideal system because it bans the initiation of force. Force is the only means by making a man act against his reasoned convictions. Since reason is man's basic means of survival and force prevents man from acting on his reason, force is against man's survival. If you are unclear as to why reason is man's basic means of survival, I refer you to Rand's essay "The Virtue of Selfishness."

With regard to the idea of no demonstration in practice that is also false. Practical demonstration is given on a continuum between statism and capitalism. On one side you have North Korea, Communist Russia, Nazi Germany, Cambodia and all those primitive African countries and the other side you have 19th century America, 20th Century Canada, 20th century Britain, modern Hong Kong and Singapore. The only countries that have any wealth that aren't capitalistic are the oil rich countries who gained their wealth by nationalizing the private investments from the more capitalistic countries and selling them back their own stolen investments.

With regard to a paradigm change, the only thing holding Objectivism back is time. If you look at any major philosophic movement it took over a century for its impact to be felt politically in a major sense. Communism for instance can be traced back to polylogism of Kant. The Renaissance can be traced to Aquinas upholding reason over faith even though he believed both were means of gaining knowledge. These paradigm changes are recognized in the Objectivist literature as the Plato-Aristotle duel. A more recent analysis of culture and the primary factors driving culture change was done my Leonard Peikoff in his book "The Dim Hypothesis", where he argued that the primary driver of cultural change is their basic approach to conceptual integration. He argues that there are 5 different systems of approach to integration, 3 being fully consistent and 2 as mixes. Right now we are seeing the first of the Rand influenced politicians entering American politics with Ted Cruz and Rand Paul being the most prominent. Ted Cruz going so far as to read from Atlas Shrugged during a filibuster.

One would argue that self proclaimed objectivists hold it back most, as almost all of the fans of this way of thinking never even venture deep enough to concern themselves with the "rational" part of rational self-interest, they are stuck at self-interest, appearing (in the best case) as cruel, immoral and greedy.